Mauritius!

“I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

~Diane Ackerman

Mauritius was beautiful! It is a very small island off the coast of Madagascar, very close to Réunion. Some of you may know it as the land of the Dodo birds. Of course, those have been extinct for a long time, but it was still kind of cool to be on the island where the last Dodo birds lived (there was a big mural of Alice in Wonderland, and the heroic Dodo that saved the other animals from her tears). Unfortunately we only had one day to spend there, but it was definitely a wonderful day. A group of us decided to go SCUBA diving at Flic-en-Flac beach. After a beautiful drive around the island, we arrived at a ridiculously extravagant resort. The dive company that works out of that resort opened especially for us (they normally don’t work on Sundays). We had a great dive, except the visibility wasn’t very good due to the heavy rains they had just a few days before. Still, there was lots to see, and the dive master was great! It felt so good to be under the water again, its been way too long since I’ve been able to dive. One thing that was hard to get used to was that they use steel tanks, instead of aluminum ones. It made me way heavier under water than I was used to! The official languages there are French and English, so I was able to practice my French a little bit. The majority of the population on Mauritius is Hindu, and just a couple days after we left they were having a big festival in honor of Shiva. We got to see people preparing their floats and decorations, the colors were unbelievable! The three dive masters we were with were all 6^th generation Mauritian, and they all had very strong opinions about France…they think French people are mean and too uptight, and the only affiliation they had with France was their French passports and the language. I heard that some French Creole was spoken, but I was hearing very proper French all day.

The reason we only stayed one day, rumor has it, is that a previous voyage basically drank the island dry and trashed almost an entire hotel. I was getting very upset knowing that we couldn’t stay longer just because of a previous voyage, I really wanted to spend more time there! Our people weren’t exactly role models either. The majority of students rented catamarans and got completely smashed.  Unfortunately, as we were standing in line to get back on the ship we saw a student being rushed out in a wheelchair…at that moment I thought that I had seen my first dead body. He was in very critical condition and no one knew if he would be able to be revived. Luckily one of the voyagers is an ER doctor, and they managed to keep him alive. He is still in Mauritius in the hospital, and we are not sure if they are going to allow him to return. I still don’t understand the mentality among some of the students that they have to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible in every port. I personally like actually remembering the countries I visit. I can only hope that India will wake some people up to the reason we are here and why it is so important to learn as much as possible, as fast as possible.

I am very, very excited for India. The day we arrive in Chennai there will be a cricket world cup match between South Africa and England. A lot of people bought tickets, and much to our British Global Studies Professor’s demise, a lot of people also bought South African Springbok jerseys.

Now please enjoy a simple explanation of cricket, as given to us by Professor Smith:

• You have two sides, one out in the field and one in;
• Each man in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out;
• When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out;
• Sometimes you get men still in and not out;
• When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in;
• There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and decide when the men who are in are out;
• When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

It can take up to five days

 Simple, right?

Slide show below!

Mauritius Slideshow!